{"id":23855,"date":"2012-10-08T18:27:39","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T16:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=23855"},"modified":"2012-10-09T10:00:15","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T08:00:15","slug":"tech-shares-dive-as-jse-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/23855\/tech-shares-dive-as-jse-struggles\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech shares dive as JSE struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leading tech shares were among some of the casualties on the JSE<\/a> on Monday (8 October) as the value of the rand continued to depreciate amid continuing mine and transport strikes.<\/p>\n

The rand traded at\u00a0R8.9945 to the dollar in morning trade, before regaining some ground against the greenback in the afternoon session.<\/p>\n

While the All Share Index declined 0.69% to 36,337 points at close, telecoms stocks waivered 3.36% to 72,914 points, led by MTN Group<\/a>, off R5.97, or 3.78%, to R151.86.<\/p>\n

The telecoms operator is taking strain as a result of economic woes in Iran, its third largest region in terms of revenue.<\/p>\n

MTN, through its 49% ownership in Irancell<\/a>, boasts 38.3 million subscribers in Iran and accounted for approximately R6.5 billion of R66.43 billion in total revenue accumulated by MTN Group in its most recent interim report.<\/p>\n

Rival operator, Vodacom<\/a>, declined 89 cents to R100.99, having traded as high as R112.22 in mid-September.<\/p>\n

ICT group, Altech<\/a> was also a big loser on Monday, shipping R3.58, or 7.67% to R43.12.<\/p>\n

At the end of last month, Allied Technologies (Altech) reported a R420 million loss in results from operating activities for the six month period ending August 2012, from a R283 million profit in 2011.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s revenue increased by 6.8% to R5.2 billion, and its operating profit before capital items was 13.5% lower than that of the prior period; this, mainly due to losses incurred in Altech\u2019s operations in East and West Africa.<\/p>\n

Altech\u2019s parent company Altron<\/a> lost 52 cents or 2.31% to R21.98.<\/p>\n

IT distributor, Mustek<\/a> was off 22 cents, or 3.69%, to R5.75. The group\u2019s earnings are dependent on the performance of the rand.<\/p>\n

The group uses the Rand\/USD spot rate at the beginning of each month to determine its selling prices, with adjustments made during the month should the exchange rate change substantially.<\/p>\n

In late August Mustek posted a 13.6% drop in its headline earnings per share for the year ended June 2012, to 71.37 cents citing rand\u00a0volatility.<\/p>\n

Small cap Information Security Architects (ISA<\/a>) on Monday (8 October) announced a decline in revenue for the six months ended August 2012, to R29.96 million, from R36.39 million before.<\/p>\n

ISA provides information security solutions that enable companies to better manage the confidentiality, integrity and availability of their mission-critical IT resources.<\/p>\n

Profit before taxation slipped to R7.31 million, from R9.37 million.<\/p>\n

Shares in the group slumped nine cents, or as much as 14.52%, to 53 cents.<\/p>\n

Related article<\/strong><\/p>\n

Altech shares slump amid interim loss<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mustek sees 13.6% drop in headline earnings<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

ISA H1 earnings disappoint<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Biggest growth in SA tech companies<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several tech giants were among some of the casualties on the JSE on Monday as the value of the rand continued to depreciate amid continuing mine and transport strikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":20342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[311,309,26,3775,175,1120,1097,27],"class_list":["post-23855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-altech","tag-altron","tag-headline","tag-information-security-architects","tag-jse","tag-mtn-group","tag-mustek","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23855"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23859,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23855\/revisions\/23859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}